


Seven Things

by Apalapucian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Marauders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:50:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9320345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apalapucian/pseuds/Apalapucian
Summary: "James leans in. Lily hears the script crumple in his hands, but she doesn't look to check. His lips touch the corner of hers, a hand coming up to cup her face. He is moving. So. Maddeningly. Slow... She curses in her head, makes up about a hundred thousand excuses for the next second—and then grabs him down by the back of his neck and kisses him fully, desperately, fervidly." AU.





	1. The Last First Day

**1/7.** Someone taps her on the shoulder while in line for drinks. She doesn't turn, as this has happened numerous times in the last ten minutes, and every single instance hasn't been anyone who wants her attention, just someone who wants her to get out of the way.

It's a riot. Loud. Crowded. Warm. And it shouldn't be, she thinks, not only because there are finally newly installed air-conditioning units in this pit, but also because she's fairly certain the last three years' first days haven't been anything like this. They _have_ been loud, crowded, and warm. But not _this_ loud, crowded, and warm.

The situation is not, however, without explanation. Apparently the admissions committee decided to be more lenient this year, so now the freshmen population is twice (possibly thrice) the number when Lily was a first year. As for the loitering upperclassmen (herself included) who should by now have a number of nooks all over the school to hang out in: the org rooms are closed until mandatory orientation this afternoon, and hallway watchers are always extra strict and pompous on the first week back. Classrooms and corridors are out of the question. Filch will be itching to kick someone out, especially now that the students have doubled. Today, there's only this, the quadrangle, and the bridge.

Mary's gone out to wait for her on the last one. It's not so much a proper bridge as a covered walkway connecting the campus's two main buildings. It's not much, but it's got a view of the lake and the grounds, and Mary's secured a decent corner, and there are way less chatty people up there. Mary said she didn't know she was claustrophobic until today. Lily's starting to think the same. It's only the first day's morning break and her brain's already brewing a half-year's worth of headaches.

Some people have brought their instruments along, most of them first years who have yet to be shown their lockers. Dratted orientation. They should have held it over the summer, like the past years. Already these "progressive changes" are going backwards... She finds herself absently tapping a beat on her thigh, and realizes she's picking up Sirius's distinctly insane drumming on the table across the hall. She resists the urge to look around. She knows it's Sirius. There's no need to check. She's gone this long without seeing them, and she really doesn't need an extra headache—

"Oi, Evans."

Oh, goddamn it.

"Are you ignoring me on purpose?"

She turns around. "Hi."

James is standing on the other side of the makeshift queue partitions, shoulder to shoulder with irate students, his hair a reflection of the chaos around them. His glasses have slid down his nose a bit. The people around him aren't happy with the guitar case slung on his shoulder. Either he's oblivious to this, or he doesn't care. Lily's willing to bet it's the latter. When their eyes meet, he grins—that pathetic, boyish, pleased-with-himself grin. His puppy grin. James is like a puppy. He _is_ a puppy. Honestly.

"Yes?" Lily asks. The line moves. With effort and some muttered apologies, he moves forward with her.

"How long've you been stuck here?"

"Like, ten minutes," she says. "If you've come to mock—"

He raises his eyebrows. "I'd say you really shouldn't expect the worst from people, but I know you only reserve that for me."

Lily purses her lips.

"Anyway," he holds out his hands—and with them, in each, a bottle of ice-cold pumpkin juice.

Lily stares at them; the condensation has wet his palms, his knuckles pale at holding them for too long. She drags the staring up at him. The line moves again, and the girl behind Lily has to clear her throat for Lily to step forward.

"They're really cold, you know," he says, when she won't say anything. "I can't feel my hands."

She frowns at him.

"Just numbing pain," he says, shaking his head theatrically. "That's all I feel."

"What's this?"

"Er, did I get them wrong?"

"No, I mean—"

"Oh. Well." His hand comes up, presumably to rake through his hair or fix his glasses or rub the back of his neck like he does, but he has the pumpkin juice, so it comes right back down. "There's barely fifteen minutes left till break's over."

"Twenty."

"We have McGonagall after this."

"Oh, hell."

"Yeah. Come on."

After some more feeble silent deliberation, she does.

When they reach the edge of the throng, she follows his wandering line of vision, gaze landing on the table nearest the cafeteria doors. She was right; Sirius has his drum sticks with him. Beside him, Peter's humming a melody she can't hear, head bobbing to the beat. Across them, his back to her, Remus is hunched over something. Lily thinks he might be scribbling. It's not just them at the table though. There's a fourth person beside Remus. A girl. Lily knows who it is. She doesn't linger on her very long. She doesn't look at her at all.

She turns to James. "Mary's waiting for me on the bridge."

He hands her the bottles and smiles. "I know. I saw her."

"Thanks for these."

"No problem."

No one leaves. They just sort of stare at each other on the threshold of the crowd, and Lily wonders if she's standing too close, if the staring's been too long, if her heart's slid down her sleeve again, _pull it back, pull it back_ —

"Evans—" he starts to say, the same time Lily says, "Well, go on now, your girlfriend's waiting for you."

He looks pained at that. Or maybe she's just imagining it. She's done a lot of that with him, as it turns out.

"Okay."

She's already backing away. "Thanks again."

"Yeah."

She's the first to turn and leave.

It's all so embarrassingly short and insignificant to leave any lasting... anything, really. It doesn't matter. It's barely five minutes; just two bottled drinks and his cold hands and his connections with the staff. Nothing new.

She doesn't see him watch her go.

It's—it's _whatever_ , really, you know? It's stupid. It's so, so, _so_ small, so unbelievably microscopic compared to the grand scheme of things. And Lily likes to believe she's the sort of person to think about that. The grand scheme of things.

But she'll remember this later all the same. The feeling. The noise. The last first day. Sirius's fleeting side-glance as she passes by their table, the drumbeats not stopping, even getting more frantic over the poor table's edge. Her fingers going numb over the bottles, but not from the cold.

She'll remember this later as the first thing.


	2. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Being with James is a lot like singing.)

**2/7.** She's never seen the stars before.

No, that doesn't make sense.

She's never imagined the stars before.

That... doesn't make sense either.

She sighs, discards this confusing introspection. She leans back on her arms and stares up at the clear skies. The school gardens are devoid of any other presence besides herself. It should creep her out, really, hanging out here alone in the dark. But there's nothing. Just... the stars.

Her number's over, but the programme isn't yet, and she can feel the bass of the music from the quadrangle. Deafening over there, just a faint thrum worrying the grass here.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and thinks, _the before and after are always the worst._ But she amends this at once, because there can't be a worst part without the bad then the worse. And singing's not bad. It's never been.

_The before and the after are always just the bad parts_ , she concludes.

The before is this: her heart beating so fast and so hard and the beat of the intro sweeping the ground off her feet. Always. Like the lyrics are smashing repeatedly against her throat, word for word, taunting her to throw them up, lose them all before she's even started. It's trembling knees and clammy fingers around the mic and trying to remember how to breathe to sing, how to breathe to stay upright.

And then she opens her mouth and it's... It's another world. It's lights and flying and unnamed smiles and her hands moving on their own, it's closing her eyes and trusting herself to hit the right notes at the right time. Mary always tells her she's a different person when she sings. Maybe she is.

The after, meanwhile, is all... pins and needles. Stars. All over. A restless, addictive thrill that settles on her skin and takes some time to run out. She tugs at her last train of thought: _She's never imagined these stars._ She's never tried to put a definite depiction to it, to _this_. The after. But when she opens her eyes and the exiguous slice of the galaxies greet her up above... There. That's what it must look like. It's moving after staying still for too long, not knowing you've stayed still for too long. The nerves catch up. The euphoria tingles. That's not bad in itself, unlike the before. It's the fact that she still feels like this after all this time that bothers her. It's that she takes this long to wind down from that high still, despite the countless times she's done this over the last four years. She's worried it might never go away.

"You're not crying, are you?"

She swears, nearly jumps out of her skin.

He's leaning against one of the columns enclosing the gardens, his tuxedo coat slung on one shoulder, his sleeves rolled up. God knows where his tie's gone. Ties never seem to have a lasting relationship with him.

She considers replying with something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing here?" or, "What do you want?", but opts to look back up at the skies and stay silent. No hopes for him to walk away, though. Ignoring him has never worked.

Sure enough, in no time he's slumping down beside her on the grass, mimicking her position.

"Strange place and time to be star gazing," says James.

"No one invited you here," says Lily.

"When will you stop being angry with me?"

"I'm not."

"You are. And if I didn't know better, I'd say you're..." But he doesn't finish.

"What?"

He ducks his head and peers up at her. Looking her squarely in the eye, he says, "Jealous."

"What?"

"Are you?"

Immediately: "No."

"That sounded like a question," he challenges.

"Only because it's incredulous. It was incredulity. It's, 'No?' as in, 'Hello? You're delusional?'"

He laughs and leans away. "Alright, alright. Sorry."

"Why are you here?"

"Can't I be?"

"Hmm. Where's your usual posse?"

"Peter mucked up his number."

"Oh, no," she says, feeling genuinely sorry. Lily's been with him and the others for long enough by now to accept that as an explanation. She knows what that feels like. She knows what happens to Peter when that happens.

"Yeah." He lies down on the grass, folding his arms behind his head. "And I was fantastic, so he said he couldn't be around me right now."

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I bet you were." She meant it to be derisive, but she knows he was. He rarely isn't. "The others then?"

"Comforting him, of course. They're in the piano room."

She nods noncommittally.

"What about you?" he asks.

"Well, I reckon I was fantastic, too."

He chuckles. "That, you were, Evans," he says, notably not derisively. "But I meant what are you doing here?"

She decides on the easiest truth: "Winding down."

"Ah," he says simply. "I know what that feels like."

"Do you?"

He pauses. "On second thought, I'm not sure."

"Figures."

Silence.

"Lily."

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry," he says, quiet but firm. He's still on his back, and she's still sat and looking up, so she doesn't see his expression.

"For what?"

"For summer. For... for kissing you."

There's a lump in her throat. She feels like swallowing it would mean defeat for some reason, so she ignores it. "You sure you got the girl right?" she asks. "If I remember correctly—and trust me, I _am_ remembering this correctly—we didn't kiss."

"Well, I... You know. Almost then. I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." The sentence trails off.

Of course. Of _course_. Of course he's sorry, of course he didn't mean it. He had— _has_ —a girlfriend, and besides Lily's hated him, hasn't she, she's been on the other side of his arguments for so long. She's always had her world parallel to his, so that even when they had their differences reconciled, even after the past year when they've become unexpectedly close, they'd never meet. They're always parallel. Distant, then close, but never crossing.

What a grossly schmaltzy thing. And acknowledgment of the gross schmaltziness doesn't even make her feel any less wretched.

"It's okay," she tells him. "I should have known, really."

He stirs. "That I was going to kiss you?"

"That you were going to be a git."

"Oh. Right."

"I'm not going to tell Jeanne, don't worry."

He sits up. Slowly, and with a deep sigh. "You don't need to. I just did."

So it appears that James Potter's full of surprises tonight. "Oh?"

"Yep," he says, nodding, popping his P.

A number of things cross Lily's mind at this. She settles for, "And how did that go?"

"She hates me."

"You mean she hates _me_ ," says Lily.

"Probably, but... Nah. No, I don't think so. There's no way you'd... She would know it's all me. I mean, I've... It's you. And me. Of course it'd have been all me."

"You're not making any sense."

He smiles. It's the humorless kind, directed at nothing. "There's no way you'd have wanted it to happen, 's what I mean. And she knows that."

Lily thinks, quite intensely that she's amazed he can't sense it off her, _It wasn't all you._ She says, "She probably hates me all the same."

"I'm sorry."

Lily shrugs. "Are you... Did you break up then? Is that why you're here? Bit insensitive to be with me after all that, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I don't know. It was either you or Sirius, and he's preoccupied at the moment. I thought I might go mad."

"You're already irredeemably mad, James."

He laughs. After a while, he says, "We didn't break up, no. I'm not sure what happened, really. She's angry, but she said... I don't know. Whatever. I'll deal with it in the morning."

Lily just nods. She doesn't ask any more. She doesn't think about it. She has no business to.

"Are you... er, wound down?" he asks her.

She considers this. "I don't know."

He checks his watch. The numbers and hands glow a faint blue-green in the dark. "They'll be at Chuckskate's now. You wanna come with?"

Before she can answer, a loud hiss shoots in the surrounding silence, and it's only now that Lily realizes the vibrating distant bass has died down. They both jump, Lily's heart skipping a beat in shock. But then the skies light up with the first round of fireworks, and she and James get on their feet to watch it, her delicate, awestruck smile mirrored on his face.

"Happy Foundation Day, Hogwarts," he mumbles, grinning at her, one hand slinging his coat back on his shoulder and the other disappearing into his pocket.

She grins back.

Stars. Fireworks. Pins and needles. Her heart beating so fast, and so hard, and the ground being swept away from beneath her feet.

Being with James is a lot like singing, she thinks.

And as she leaves the gardens with him to meet the boys at Chuckskate's—feeling happy, feeling guilty, feeling like stars are dying and being born and exploding in and on and around her—she realizes the difference is that being with James is somehow before and during and after all at once.

And that— _this_ —is the second thing.


	3. Their (Not-Really-First) First Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (His bottom lip is chapped. He tastes like roasted caramel macchiato.)

**3/7.** The third thing is a kiss. By the gods, it's _a kiss_ , if you'd believe it.

It's not her first kiss—it's not even _their_ first kiss. She and James have been leads in two musicals and a short film project before, so his lips (and tongue, mind) aren't completely foreign territory. But it's _quite_ a fucking kiss, and she knows that that's such a pathetic reason to make it this much of a deal. It's _the_ kiss, because it's the first to really matter. While the almost-kiss from summer matters, too—a lot, and it sucks that it does—that one was... that was a breath sighed upon a mirror, misting for a second then gone in the next. This, on the other hand, is a goddamn message scrawled on the glass with bright red lipstick.

Weirdly enough, it's her ex-boyfriend Terrence Hunter that she has to blame for it. (To thank for it, later, but not till later.)

This is what happens:

James and his mates are, for once, in Merlin Hall not because they're in detention. They're there because everyone is. Teresa Lockhart, department head and appointed over-all moderator of the seniors' final project, has called them all up for midyear updates. It's Hogwarts tradition for graduating students to produce a full-scale show to be presented at the end of the year. They're supposed to work on it the whole year round, in between their classes and the other little projects and homework and quizzes and group reports. It's also tradition for Teresa to be full-scale stressed about this, as Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students are invited, and she won't let anything less than perfection to be showcased. This year, the project is a musical on a modern-day version of the Iliad. It was that or the life story of St. Paul, and the decision was unanimous and submitted by the homeroom officers in a beat.

Lily plays Andromache. Terrence is Hector, because Jeanne cast the damn thing, and Jeanne hates Lily. Mary and Dorcas Meadowes (and Lily, really, because she's almost always around when they worked on it) wrote the script. Marlene Mckinnon and the Prewett twins are on choreography. Frank Longbottom and Alice Wells head the stage management team. Benjy Fenwick will direct. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, for reasons only known to the four of them, have adamantly expressed their desire to stay out of the stage on this one, to the disappointment of Teresa who wanted them to star in it so bad (especially Sirius, who, if Teresa had her way, would have been the face who launched a thousand ships, for goodness' sake). They were assigned instead to produce the music. This particular assignment is probably the only thing Teresa and Lily ever agreed on; the Marauders are, without a doubt, the best in the year when it comes to that.

The updates are a disaster.

By standard (Teresa's, at least), the seniors should have nailed a good half of the show by now—substantially, if not chronologically. Instead, they have procrastinated until last week, when the need for the updates was announced. In their defense, they've been busy. McGonagall and Flitwick have been burying them under piles of homework week after week, and since most of them, being seniors, are also club officers and interns and prefects and whatnot, there really hasn't been any time for a project that they know wouldn't be shown until the end of the year.

They had to stay up all night last night at Benjy's house, the Fenwicks' otherwise spacious living room cramped with frantic, murmuring seniors smelling of coffee and ink; finishing drafts, recording, rehearsing, designing, polishing up a half-arsed half-play for Teresa Lockhart's stupid, graded updates. Honestly, the solidarity is unbelievable. Lily's so proud of them. What an admirable, innovative bunch of procrastinators they are.

By the morrow, they've bullshitted their way to a passable update. Everyone's half-dead. Merlin Hall smells _exactly_ like Starbucks. And, most relevant to Lily's affairs: Terrence Hunter—Lily's ex, Lily's Hector, Lily's play husband whom she has to kiss in the next act—ends up in the school clinic after passing out in exhaustion during intermission.

There is no understudy, for there are only so many of them in the graduating class. Teresa pointblank wouldn't skip any scene. She calls for Sirius (mainly because he's always the first face and name on top of her head) and says, "You go. Be Hector for now."

To which Sirius comes forth from backstage and replies, "Eurgh, no." Lily raises an eyebrow at him. He adds, amending, "I don't know the lines, Ms. Lockhart."

"Take the script. It's only Ms. Evans I have to see. She's not getting away with it just because Mr. Hunter's not around."

Lily was going to protest too, but Teresa's apparent doubt on her ability shuts her up in her want to prove something. Sirius looks so uncomfortable that had it been any other time, under some other circumstance, it would have been funny. "She's like—she's like my sister," he says, throwing Lily a horrified look.

Scratch that. It _is_ funny.

Not to Teresa though. She rolls her eyes. "Mr. Lupin?"

"Same, Ms. Lockhart," Remus calls from behind Sirius, not bothering to step up. "Sorry."

Teresa rolls her eyes again, this time with an impatient tut. "Mr. Pettigrew?"

"Okay," he says at once, jumping on stage. At his eagerness Sirius huffs, Remus frowns, James looks like he's going to laugh, and Lily _does_ laugh.

And so they go.

Except when it's actually time to kiss her, Peter starts giggling, so Lily does too, and Teresa, outraged, yells at him to get offstage. "Mr. Potter!" she calls from her seat in the audience, incensed now, and James's head appears over the right curtain.

"Yes?" he asks.

"Do this scene please and let's all be done with it."

He emerges fully. He's holding his guitar, and he rakes his hair with his free hand. "Can we just be done with it period? We can do it tomorrow. We're wasting time—"

" _You're_ wasting my time making excuses."

James casts Lily a sheepish glance. "Ms. Lockhart, she's like my sister," he supplies, like that hasn't been said twice in the last ten minutes.

Lily licks her lips and stares determinedly at the many empty seats of Merlin Hall.

"Yes, it appears that Ms. Evans here is a sister to everyone, but it also appears that I don't care. You know, truthfully, I expected so much more from all of you." She crosses her legs and leans back on her seat. "Now you're either going to take the script from Mr. Pettigrew and endure not five minutes onstage with your _sister_ , or this is all over and you all get a T for the second quarter in my subject."

James lowers his guitar, the bottom hitting the stage with a thud. "That's a bit too much," he says, the same time Lily says, "That's unfair."

But they have driven Teresa Lockhart to her most terrible mood now, and in response she only takes the clipboard from the seat next to her. She starts scribbling. The discussion's over.

James takes a deep breath—angry, clearly—and shoves the guitar into Peter's hands. Peter trades the script for it.

He walks over to Lily, eyes roving over Terrence's lines.

_This is terrible_ , Lily thinks. _My god, this is terrible._

She shouldn't have had that much coffee, because now the caffeine, on top of exhaustion and lack of sleep, is clouding up her brain, making her mind race more than usual.

When he reaches her side, James looks at her and mutters, "Sorry."

Lily shrugs.

Out of the Marauders, Lily would say Remus is the best actor. Sirius is good too, the second best, but tends to lean towards particular genres, and is better on screen than on stage. Peter is the best singer, hands down. James is... He's sort of the "jack of all trades master of none" type. Brilliant with his guitar though. Has a knack of creating something beautiful out of chaos—never mind that sometimes, his and Lily's definitions of 'beautiful' vary.

_He's got pretty hands, too,_ she observes, while she waits for him to finish reading through. _And is annoyingly cute when worried._

He delivers his lines mechanically, just recites them off the paper, possibly to piss Teresa Lockhart off. Unsuccessful, that, because like she said, Teresa only cares about Lily. He's nervous. Lily can't linger on it for long, because unlike him she has to actually do her role with justice, but she's pretty sure his hands are shaking. He won't look directly at her. Of course, it could just be the anger. But Lily doubts it. She's known him long enough to know which is which.

When it's time, all too quick, to kiss, he drops the script to his side and looks at her, properly now, as if in question. If it is, she doesn't answer. For one, she doesn't really know what the unspoken question is. For another, she doesn't dare break act. She can't what with Teresa being a terror at the moment, but also for her own sake. She can't afford to let _Lily_ be here, to let herself be the one to kiss him. She is Andromache. She is an actress, a good one, not some amateur who cracks because she hopelessly fancies this nervous idiot.

She waits. She'd have kissed him first, that would still have made sense in the context of the scene, but she knows Teresa to be a strictly-by-the-book person and Hector's supposed to move first. She doesn't want to screw things up lest she be made to do it over again.

James leans in. Lily hears the script crumple in his hands, but she doesn't look to check. _This is terrible_ , she thinks again. His lips touch the corner of hers, a hand coming up to cup her face. He is moving. So. Maddeningly. _Slow_. Given the situation, she probably ought to be grateful that he's settled for this—a careful, chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth—but it just leaves a burning want in the pit of her stomach that almost, almost shatters her composure. He chooses _now_ , of all times, to be a gentleman. Christ.

Over James's shoulder, she sees Teresa watch them with a crease on her brows and a subtle shake of her head.

This won't do.

Lily curses in her head, makes up about a hundred thousand excuses for the next second, and then— _you're Andromache, you're Andromache_ —she practically grabs James down by the back of his neck— _Hector, your_ husband _, the_ love of your life—and kisses him fully, desperately, fervidly.

His bottom lip is chapped. He tastes like roasted caramel macchiato. Which is so not Hector, and is so, so James, that Lily just... _melts._ Goddamn it all.

He seizes up, catches on, and then kisses her back.

It lasts longer than the script requires.

_You're Andromache._

The script is on the floor, his hands are on her waist.

_Jeanne_ definitely _hates you now._

Teresa Lockhart clears her throat.

They break apart.

"That will do," says Teresa, waving a dismissing hand at them. "Someone call Mr. Fenwick up."

James turns to Lily. Before she can say anything, he ruffles her hair, something he habitually does to annoy her. She pats his hand away. He chuckles, but it's more a huff than a real laugh, and his lingering smile is stilted. He leaves without a word, exits through the same way he came.

Lily goes the other way, making sure her intense internal rampage isn't reflected in any way on her face.

Before she's out of range, he hears Sirius say from the other side of the stage, with a smirk that Lily can't see but is so sure is there: "This is why you're an only child, James—you do know it's socially unacceptable to go around snogging your sister like that?"


	4. Self-Entitlement & All That Crap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (We all get angry, even at the people we like best. Sometimes it's worse when it's the people we like best. That anger runs deeper.)

**4/7.** She was so ready to slam the door in his face. In fact, she's on her way to open it just so she can do the dramatic slamming bit. Also so he can see how cross she still is at him. That's it. And then she's going back up to her room and turning The Who all the way up so she can't hear the doorbell ring again, in case; do some homework, call Mary, do practice sets—do something, anything, that doesn't involve bespectacled gits with ridiculous hair.

Turns out it's not even him on the doorstep.

It only takes a second to get over her surprise. She slackens, but leaves her hand on the edge of the door. Let's face it, Sirius Black being here isn't that much different from _him_ being here. Sirius Black being here just deepens her annoyance.

"Did he send you?" she asks.

Sirius sighs. "Okay, seriously, don't you think you're overreacting? Both of you. I expected this sort of behaviour from him, mind, but not from you. You're both being so... _me_. My god."

_Yeah, definitely slamming it in this one's face, too._ "Tell him he sent the wrong friend," says Lily, closing the door, but Sirius pushes against it. They scuffle with it for a minute. Sirius wins.

Lily swipes a strand of hair from her face and glares at him. "I'm _busy_ , okay?"

"No, you're not," says Sirius, who can't swipe the strand of hair off _his_ face; his hands still on the door making sure it stays open. "And James didn't send me. I promise."

She raises an eyebrow.

"I do think you're overreacting, like, a _little_ , but but but— _oi_ —will you leave the door alone— _but!_ He was a prat to you. He was stupid. I don't take orders from stupid prats."

Lily crosses her arms and regards him carefully. "Are you telling the truth?"

"I solemnly swear."

Lily rolls her eyes, distracted. "Why do you four always say that? It's not cool. Which of you nerds came up with that?"

Sirius shrugs. "I don't even remember now. But if it's lame, it's most likely James."

"Yeah, he's the nerd leader. King of the dorks."

Sirius nods. "He is."

"Arrogant toerag. I'm surprised he can walk around without falling over all the time. Head that big."

"Practice," says Sirius with a somber air of authority. "I've been around the bloke long enough to know the secret. He's a git, but a usually persistent, generally hardworking git."

"I hate him."

"Me too."

There's a smile threatening to break on Lily's lips. "Stop it."

Sirius's, on the other hand, has long since broken. "Stop what?"

Lily feels like laughing now. What a horrible band of boys, these four are. "What are you really doing here, Sirius?"

"Well, like I said, I hate Prongs. And incidentally, I don't hate you." Lily's gotten used to their strange nicknames by now, so she no longer makes any particular notice of Sirius's habitual sudden resorts to it. He reaches into his back pocket. "I have two tickets for that Tarry Bean musical at the Civic Center."

"But that's awful," says Lily slowly. "I thought you said you _didn't_ hate me."

"The tickets are free. So."

"They're free so what?"

"So free _laughter_ , Evans; hell, keep up, will you? Let's go poke fun at something. Let's have an intellectually stimulating conversation about how this show is not only a dishonor on the books, but also wrong on so many other levels."

She frowns at him. "I said it was awful, and I stand by that, but I wouldn't go laugh at anyone! The people behind that production still worked hard for it. It's still a dream come true to some; it's not their fault the—" She stops because Sirius looks like he's going to explode trying to keep his laughter in. "What?"

"Why is it so easy to pull your leg?" he asks, his laughter bursting out of him in breathy fits. He fans the tickets at Lily's face. "They're discount coupons for Chuckskate's. They expire tomorrow. Come on."

Lily takes them, finds that they are indeed what he said they are, and slaps Sirius's arm with them. "You know what the funniest thing about your joke is? That you think you're capable of having 'intellectually stimulating conversations'."

"Ha. Excuse you."

"Why would I go with you?"

He looks affronted. "Because we're friends!"

"You have three other friends."

He smirks. "Jealousy's never suited you, Evans. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Sirius. _No._ Really. Why?"

He raises a hand to count off his reasons: "Remus has check-ups, Peter's stuck at their shop, and James, who I should reiterate did _not_ send me, doesn't feel like Chuckskate's right now. He doesn't feel like anything much except his bedroom and blasting ballads and, I dunno, making out with his guitar—all of which I can't stand, and which I will assume you don't care about at the moment. And then I hate everyone else on the planet. There."

"Hmm."

"Evans, I'm fucking starving, you hear? I want something greasy and disgusting right now. Are you coming or not?"

Lily stares at him for a beat, and then relents. "Fine. But we are _not_ , under any circumstance, talking about a certain mate of yours."

"Again with the overreacting bit. We hate him. I've been oriented. It's all good."

"Okay. Wait here then. Let me just change my shirt."

"Oh, good, thank God. I was gonna say—"

"No one asked you, Black," she calls over her shoulder, already inside the house on the way up the stairs. "Watch the door."

* * *

Thirty minutes into their burgers ('Chuckskate's limited offer overloaded special', with which they used Sirius's discount coupons) and chips (with cheese powder and spicy mayo, as per their usual request) and milkshakes (mango-dragonfruit and strawberry-banana, _don't ask_ )—Lily is complaining to Sirius about James, breaking her own rule. She doesn't know who started it, how the conversation swerved in that direction. Probably her. One minute they were discussing the Tarry Bean musical; the next she's trying to justify herself to Sirius. Because she _knows_ she is being over the top about the whole not-talking-to-James thing, alright? She knows that. But she can't help it, and she's decided that she's not going to deprive herself of self-honesty just because some social standard dictates her actions as overreaction.

"Your dismissal of my feelings is exactly the point," Lily schools him. "I can't just—I can't just be nice when I don't feel like being nice to him yet. No one else but me is going to validate my feelings. And as it should be, you know? I'm the only one entitled to them, and right now what I feel is—right now, it's just—I'm—"

"Right now, you're pissed at him," says Sirius. He slurps his milkshake rather scandalously.

"Yes," says Lily, leaning back on her seat. "Right now I'm pissed at him."

Sirius considers this tirade. "All right. You've got your point across." And then, "Do you know why he was mad that day though?"

"No. But whatever it is, it still won't excuse—"

"He and Jeanne broke up."

Lily's hand freezes over their basket of soggy chips. "He really did send the wrong friend," she mutters.

"Oi."

"You do know that just makes it worse?"

They have a short staring match. This, being chiefly _not_ physical, is the one Sirius loses. "Okay, fine, yeah, that might've been the wrong thing to say."

"It was quite a bit, yeah," says Lily. "Are you saying it's my fault? Is that why he's mad at me?"

"Are you bonkers? _You're_ mad at _him_. I thought we just established that."

" _Was_ mad at me then," she says. "Do you even know what he did? Or did he just go, 'God, I was so fucking shitty to Lily today,' and then you all went about your lives?"

Sirius looks at her funny. "That's exactly what he said," he says. "You're so freaky."

"He stood me up," she informs him. It sounds childish— _feels_ childish—but she's still angry and sad about it. "I waited for him for two hours at the plaza. In the _rain_. It wasn't even a... He asked me for some stupid lecture notes for Vector's last session, because you lot missed it. We were supposed to work on the sets together, and I... I know it was stupid of me to wait for two bloody hours, I don't know what I was thinking. It's not my business if you failed Calc. I could have gone home and it still wouldn't be my fault if you flunked, you know that. I could just have given them to Remus the next day or left it at one of your lockers or something. But... he didn't text, Sirius, he didn't call, no nothing, and I was beside myself with worry. And then he just—he appears, and he walks past me, all his brooding self, and, _fine_ , so he did look a bit pathetic, but everyone who walks in the rain without a bloody umbrella looks like a homeless sodden puppy, alright? And that didn't make standing me up and ignoring me any less unacceptable."

"Okay," says Sirius, looking thoughtful. "I didn't know about this bit. Did you say anything?"

"Yes," says Lily. "I... I don't remember what I said exactly, but I was so shocked at first that it took me a minute to speak, and then... I had to call him because he's walked away by then, and then I must have made some cheeky remark. _Surely_ I made some cheeky remark. I was furious and I felt stupid. But he was _already_ mad, it seemed, so whatever I said just... He looked at me like... Like he _dislikes_ me so much."

Sirius, who was nibbling on a chip, swallows quickly to shake his head and say, "Nah, that's impossible."

"You weren't there," says Lily. Until then she thought that such thing was impossible as well. She chuckles sadly. "And here I thought I was so close to beating you to the James Potter's best pal spot."

He scoffs. "Didn't know you wanted it, but all the same: In your wildest dreams, Evans."

Sirius seems to be mulling over her revelations, and Lily lets him.

"That doesn't mean you're no longer in the running," he then says at length.

"What?"

"It doesn't mean... Look, being best mates with him doesn't mean you're immune to that. 'Cause I'm not."

"Sirius, you're doing that thing where you're only saying the last part of your train of thought out loud."

He laughs. "To that look. The one you said? Like he disliked you so much? We all get angry, even at the people we like best. Sometimes it's worse when it's the people we like best. That anger runs deeper."

Lily would have supplied some sassy commentary at this, at him being all philosophical, but she knows he's right. They both know it by experience.

He continues, "James himself rarely whips it out—"

Lily winces. "I really wish you wouldn't phrase it like that."

"Oh, get over it," he says, flicking a bit of lettuce at her. "But I get that, too. James's look of doom. Well, _got_ it. Once. But I never imagined him... I mean, to you?"

They're quiet. (Except for Sirius's ridiculous slurping.)

"When?" asks Lily, who can't help herself. "Was he angry at you, I mean."

"We're not talking about that. It was a long time ago. We have more pressing matters at hand."

Lily rests her chin on her palm, elbow on the table. "What did you do?"

He leans over to point his straw at her. "What did _you_ do?"

"I did _not_ do anything. You think I'd be this offended if I know he had reason to treat me like that?"

Sirius grimaces. "You didn't, really? When it was me, I... I did something really terrible. If you didn't do anything—"

"I didn't."

"Then... Wow, okay, I should talk to him."

Lily narrows her eyes. "When you said he was a stupid prat, you didn't really mean it, did you?"

"I thought you were being mean to him for no reason, yeah," he says at once. "I came to tell you off. But apparently it's the other way around."

"So he _did_ send you," says Lily, shaking her head. "Without even telling you what he did!"

"No, he really didn't," says Sirius, without any trace of jest. "Which is why I sent myself. He usually would, as you know. But he just—doesn't talk to any of us about it. Just broods all over the place. It's freaking me out. I had to come and scold you."

"With fantastic food at our favorite place," remarks Lily. "They don't offer parenting classes at Hogwarts too, do they? I'm asking for a friend."

"Shut up."

"I'd say give him a break."

"But he wants to talk to you really bad."

"Did he say that?"

"He doesn't have to."

Lily ignores this and reverts the talk back to her suggestion. "I meant you. As his friends. You know, let him be for now, don't try to fix it. He did just break up with his girlfriend. He didn't have the right to treat me so awfully, but he does have the right to mope about that, at least."

For some reason, Sirius looks at her incredulously.

"What?" asks Lily.

"He's not moping because of that."

"Well, what then?"

"He's moping because of _you_. I'm here with you, not with Jeanne, if you haven't noticed."

_Now_ it's Lily's turn to look at him incredulously.

"Okay, maybe also a little about Jeanne—maybe a quarter or so about Jeanne," Sirius concedes. "But I bet you my drums and half my scholarship it's mostly because he feels rubbish about what happened between you two."

She ought to be flattered. Her heart does flutter a bit, she's not going to lie. But also, "That says a lot about him as a boyfriend."

Sirius backtracks at once. "No, I—Okay, yes, it's... Maybe _half_ about Jeanne."

"Ahuh."

Sirius slumps in his seat. "I really shouldn't be speaking for him, should I?"

"Yeah, no, you really shouldn't."

"But who would if you wouldn't speak to him?" He's practically groaning.

"I don't _need_ to."

"Yes, you do."

"I'm not his mum."

"Yeah, _I_ am," he says. "I'm being his mum. Heavens."

Lily grins at him. "Not news to me."

He sighs. Then he subtly checks his watch, but must have found the hour okay, for he doesn't comment on it. "Listen, you can still be angry at him after, all right?" he proposes. "Just... hear him out. He's sorry, I know it. I _see_ it. He's pathetic when he's guilty. You don't have to forgive him right away, just maybe see if... if he's worth some consideration."

Lily thinks on it. After a time, she says, with a faint smile, "I always pegged Remus as the group lawyer."

"He _is_ ," Sirius clears up. "I'm the spokesperson. I'm not _defending_ James; he was obviously a git. I'm... I'm just speaking for him, since he can't."

Lily straightens up. "Fine, fine. I'll talk to him."

Sirius looks risibly pleased with himself. He turns around, gets someone's attention from the counter, and asks for another round of chips.

* * *

On the way home, Lily tells him, "Thanks. It was surprisingly fun."

"You don't really mean the 'surprisingly' part," he says with absolute confidence and no trace of inquiry whatsoever.

"I... Can I tell you something?"

"Shoot."

"I'm not even going to count on you promising not to tell anyone—"

"Can you maybe tell me this something without insulting me?"

Lily laughs. "Sorry. It's just something you might be dying to tell people."

His curiosity lines his forehead. "Then why risk telling me in the first place?"

"I don't know. Because it would explain why I'm so worked up about this whole thing? Because I just feel like telling you?"

"I bet it was the chips," Sirius conjectures. "We were drugged or something."

"Probably. We had, like, a sack."

"We did. I'm not eating chips for the rest of my life... Now what's this something?"

"No promises so I don't expect, but—do try your very bestest to keep this between us, yeah? And, if you must must _must_ tell someone, just please don't let it be your best mate."

"Which one?"

She nudges his side. "You know which one; don't be difficult."

"Gotcha. Go for it then. So much _suspense_."

"Okay. The truth is, I may kind of, er..."

Sirius holds up a finger, silencing her. "Wait," he says, a gleam of excitement resting in the crinkle of his eye. They've arrived at Lily's house now. They stop by the gates. "You're not going to tell me you fancy James, are you?"

Lily gapes at him. "Erm," she drags out. She swallows. "No."

And then Sirius laughs, harder than he ever has since he showed up, doubling over and leaning against the nearest solid surface. "You totally were! Oh, what the hell."

"If I was—which I _wasn't_ —what's so funny about it!"

"You were acting like it's this big secret and all, but—but everyone already knows that!"

All of Lily's insides feel like burning. _What was she thinking?_ "What? What do you mean?"

"Well, everyone except James, because he's a stupid prat—oh, hey, I did mean that one. There you go."

But Lily has other concerns. "What do you mean _everybody knows_?" She thinks she's yelling. She doesn't care about it right now. She can't hear herself over her heart. It's gone completely nuts.

"Calm down, Evans, I just meant the boys of course. Me, Moony, Wormy... Wait, no, I don't know about Wormtail. Honestly, how can you have been around me for so long and still think I mean _everyone_ when I say 'everyone'? Shame on you."

Lily has to close her eyes and take deep breaths to recompose herself. "I was going to have a heart attack, you prick."

"What are you so scared of anyway? So what if you like him?"

"He has a girlfriend."

" _Had_ ," Sirius puts out.

"It sucks when you fancy someone who doesn't feel the same way," she adds.

Sirius just stares at her. He's biting the inside of his cheek to smother his grin, or to keep his mouth shut, or both.

Lily knows what this means—what it could _possibly_ mean—but she doesn't want to assume outright. Besides, they've both already settled the fact that he shouldn't be speaking for James about things that he really doesn't know much about.

(But doesn't he know? Sirius? Wouldn't he know about this?)

"He's a git," she says, if only out of frustration, to wrap the whole thing up.

"Now _that_ I can't really do much about," says Sirius.

She says thanks again, and good-bye, and then she goes inside. Before Sirius disappears from sight, she calls him back to ask, "Sorry, I just want to ask—Are you okay? With me... fancying him? And whatnot?"

Sirius makes a face at her. "Why are you asking me?"

"Dunno. You're the mum. Like you said."

He rolls his eyes and says, "You really think I'd bother to show up at someone's house and take them out just so they could ramble to me about some bloke they have a crush on?"

"I don't have a _crush—"_

"Lily. Please. I thought you were all about emotional self-entitlement and all that crap."

"You could just have said yes like a normal person," she says, but she's smiling. "And _yes_ , I do think you'd bother. If it's a really cute sister or something."

He's smiling, too. Okay, he _isn't_ , but she can tell he's trying not to. "Too bad I only have a problematic brother then," he says. He waves unceremoniously, resuming on his way.

"Reg is cute!" Lily calls after him, laughing.

"Good _bye_ , Evans."

"See you around, Black."

She closes the door.

Gently—none of that dramatic slamming rubbish.


	5. Happy Teachers' Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (It's the first day of school all over again, except more... pink. Madame Puddifoot's threw up all over Hogwarts.)

**5/7.** Classes are never suspended for Valentine's Day.

Generally.

At Hogwarts, it depends.

See, at Lily, Mary, and the Marauders' beloved school, Valentine's Day is also set to be Teachers' Day. This goes so far back that no one now remembers who established this. It's just always been the way it is. On this day (except when it falls on a weekend), all classes before lunch are canceled to make way for a customary morning presentation—a tribute of sorts. There are song numbers, dance numbers, skits, a few parlour games; activities starring and all in honor of the school's hardworking faculty, staff, and personnel. Over the many, many years that Hogwarts has witnessed this within their halls, the students have come to notice that their performance in the tribute determines whether or not the rest of the day will be free. Now, as you know, free days are almost as highly coveted (and as difficult to obtain) as O's in Hogwarts, especially for the stressed, sleep-deprived crammers of the graduating class. This yearly shower of flattery and presents is arguably the easiest price there is to pay for it (for the free days, that is, not the high grades; 'fraid there isn't an easy price for that one). They are wont to give it their all in the presentations, therefore; all of them, first to fourth years, excellence having been proven over time to provide at least another half a day's worth of leniency and good mood for their professors. In the last three years, the tribute unfailingly worked its magic. Lily wonders if it's because they actually do well with it or because the professors now just treat the class suspensions as a tradition in its own right too.

Of course, this tactic doesn't work a hundred per cent. But the seniors are in luck this year, for McGonagall and Vector's classes are scheduled in the morning, and they're the only immune ones, really. Both were cancelled by default for the programme. Slughorn, Flitwick, and Sprout have all announced class suspensions for their respective subjects immediately after James and Sirius (this year's hosts) wrap up the show.

Success. Huzzah.

By lunch break, most of the seniors are back in their dormitories or else in vacant rooms or some other, catching up on homework, on sleep, on revisions; making good use of the free time as they should. As much as some want to escape all the mawkish hubbub inside and seek the aggressively non-festooned interior of Chuckskate's (the only place in town that doesn't celebrate Valentine's Day), no one's allowed to go out yet, as it's still technically school hours, classes cancelled or not. The rest of the school then, it being a free day _and_ Valentine's Day, is buzzing. Nearly everyone is holding bouquets, or chocolates, or chocolate bloody bouquets. Here and there are grand public displays of affection. Banners. Confetti. Wreaths. A group of sophomores have hoarded three long tables in the cafeteria, playing a deafening, endless round of the bottle rhythm game. Some freshmen have occupied the stage overlooking the quadrangle, practicing a play or shooting a music video or something, taking advantage of the lavishly furnished backdrops. There is a rondalla on the bridge, there are people making out in the piano room, half the juniors are loitering in Merlin Hall. The marriage and dedication booths were allowed to operate for the rest of the day, so occasionally there would be people running from or pursuing other people, and over the din the speakers blast ballad after ballad, dedication after dedication. Mush after sap after mush after sap.

It's the first day of school all over again, except more... pink. Madame Puddifoot's threw up all over Hogwarts.

Lily and Mary are in the library, cross-legged on the floor by the classic literature shelf, eating pumpkin pasties and caramel cauldrons as quietly as it requires to keep Madame Pince oblivious to their rule-breaking. Scattered before them are Calc notes and Economics notes and History notes and almost-done analyses of their individual musical assignments. Mary is revising the end-of-the-year production script on her lap. Lily is redoing Vector's practice sets. There are about five other students in the place, but they're all seated round the tables in the left wing.

"Even Madame Pince has flowers," whispers Mary, although not dejectedly, peering through the books at the pacing librarian. "This is insane."

"It wasn't last year," Lily says. She shoves the sweets and empty wrappers beneath the notes, in case Pince walks their way.

Last year she had Terrence Hunter and Mary had Fabian Prewett. Last year they had lilies (Lily) and sunflowers (Mary) and tickets to a concert at the Civic Center; some local band whose name she can't remember now (both of them).

"You know what's weird?" says Mary. She turns to Lily now, relaxing visibly; Madame Pince has taken her seat on the tall stool behind her desk, so they're good. "Everyone has roses," she says, bewildered. "In the cafeteria all of the second years had roses. Every single one of them. There're still people with the ridiculously expensive arrangements—"

"Fenwick," cites Lily. She hasn't seen him yet, but she's sure of it.

"Fenwick," Mary confirms. "I think he bought Selena a car. That, or a bloody house and lot. I saw keys."

"Marlene had tulips," says Lily, remembering seeing Marlene on the bridge. "I think Dorcas had daisies, before she chucked them in the bin."

"Of _course_ Dorcas would chuck hers in the bin," says Mary sardonically.

"Yeah, naturally."

Mary chuckles. "Alice had Baby's-breath too, from Frank," she says. "They were lovely! But she also had a rose, you know, aside from that. And it wasn't from Frank. Everyone's got a rose. I asked Cass where everyone's getting them, and she said someone seems to have put a rose in every locker. Have you checked yours?"

"Nope. You?"

"No, I haven't yet."

"That's cute, at any rate," says Lily. "Bit creepy, but mostly cute... What colour are the roses?"

"Not yellow," says Mary, knowing all too well why Lily's asking. "Actually, it's every colour available in the shop, except yellow. You're out of luck. Whoever's behind it mustn't like you."

Lily pouts. "Rubbish."

"I bet it's the Marauders," says Mary.

Lily frowns at her. "So the Marauders don't like me."

"They like to _annoy you_ , that's for sure," says Mary, not without point. "It has them written all over it, doesn't it?"

"I dunno. It's sweet," Lily points out. She pauses. "Remember when they stole the plywood Filch used to board up the second floor? When the Head Office was under construction?"

"When they used it to ski down the stairs and break James's leg _and_ Sirius's neck? Yeah, I think everyone remembers that."

"Well, that's what I'm saying. _That_ has them written all over it."

Mary laughs. "I guess... Oh my god, remember when Umbridge chased them around the campus?"

Lily tries to stifle her giggles with her knuckles. She doesn't succeed much. "God, if that wasn't the most conflicting moment of my life though."

She hated them then, these four cocky boys who were too smart to get caught, charming enough to get away with it if they _did_ get caught. But that was shallow hate, that was just—great annoyance at best, perhaps, and Umbridge, this Darwin bloody Umbridge was just... _something else_. Lily despised their racist, sexist, humble brag, bullying, just absolutely horrendous monster of a professor, with every fiber of her being. Everyone did. One afternoon, in his class, Sirius and James started this ear-piercing, disjointed racket; Sirius with an old pair of drumsticks and James with this spare untuned guitar from the music room. No intro, just out of nowhere, this sudden rain of cacophonic beats that made everyone jump. A beat before Darwin turned around in indignation, James and Sirius were able to stop and drop the instruments, so perfectly-timed that only they could have pulled the thing off. "Who was that?" Darwin asked, and no one answered, and it's so stupid that he had to ask anyway, because only the boys were holding instruments at the time. After half an hour of cricking his neck trying to catch them at it and a hundred blatant denials, he finally walked over to the obvious culprits, glared, and glared, and just glared, really, and the boys just looked infuriatingly, innocently back at him. And then James said, when Darwin still wouldn't speak, "What is it, sir?", and Peter was blue in the face with suppressed laughter. "Mr. Lupin," Darwin called, not taking his eyes off James and Sirius, "Who was making all that noise, if you please?" And Remus said, without cracking, "What noise, sir?" And everyone was smirking or else shaking in silent laughter behind their notebooks, behind curtains of untied hair. So Darwin called Fenwick too, to ask, and then Dorcas, and Marlene, and even Lily herself. All of them played along without blinking. "What noise, sir?" they all said, or some other variation of that, and Darwin had no choice but to return to the front and resume the lecture. When James and Sirius went at it again, Darwin, trembling with rage by now, spun in his spot so fast, and he looked so funny that one or two people in the back weren't able to hold their laughter anymore. But Darwin didn't care about that, because at _last_ James and Sirius hadn't stopped playing in time. Darwin screamed, "Aha!", pointing at them, but James and Sirius still weren't stopping, just staring right back at him with unfazed expressions and crooked, half-grins over their openly moving hands. Then Sirius said, still banging the things on his armchair, in his trademark House of Black skin-splitting ice, "God knows it isn't me, Mr. Umbridge," at which James, Remus, Peter, and the whole class exploded with laughter. And then, well, that quite set Darwin Umbridge off. He threw the board eraser at the boys, missed spectacularly, and then chased them out of the classroom and around the campus, yelling profanities and hurling coins and pens and all sorts of trinkets off his pockets. He didn't last the year.

Good, crazy times.

"I still think it's them," says Mary, drawing Lily out of her reverie. "Maybe they're being nice. It's our last year here, so maybe it's, like, special Marauder shenanigans."

"Maybe," says Lily distractedly, still feeling like laughing over the memory.

For the rest of the afternoon, they manage to eliminate a good deal from their outstanding schoolwork. Around four o'clock, when the bell rings, they pack up and head out. It's only the earliest dismissal, the bell for first years, but it's not like anyone would know the difference. Besides, Mary and Lily are hungry, having skipped lunch. All they had all afternoon were those sweets. They _need_ to snag a decent booth at Chuckskate's.

The school has exhausted itself to an extent—the rondalla on the bridge is down to just three members now, the dedications have run out over the intercom, and the first years on the stage are napping. From the bridge, where Lily and Mary pause to survey the day's aftermath, they look like dominoes of sprawled bodies; heads resting on arms or bags or on their friends' abdomens. It's much quieter. The roses are still everywhere, although not one yellow rose is indeed in sight.

"Should we check our lockers?" asks Mary, reading Lily's mind.

"I don't know about you, but I'm too hungry to walk all the way back to the Gryffindor building," says Lily.

"You just won't bother because it's not going to be yellow."

Lily sticks out her tongue at her. "Sue me, Macdonald."

"I would, Evans, but I bet even your lawyer would think you're being petty." But she doesn't break pace, and they continue their trip down to the gates. "You do know the odds of you receiving a dozen yellow roses without _actually_ telling anyone it's what you want—"

"I know, I know," Lily cuts off. "I know it's... _specific_. But that's how I'll know he's the one! That's the sign."

"I thought I'm the signs type of person between us."

"I'm full of surprises," says Lily. "It's why you like me. I never bore you."

Mary huffs, shaking her head, but she doesn't say no.

Once they step beyond the threshold of the school, James Potter, basically, just appears out of nowhere and blocks their path.

"Whoa," says Mary, backing away one step.

"Potter," says Lily sternly, jabbing a finger at his chest so _he_ would step back. He does. "I thought we both agreed that the teleporting thing was going to be a secret."

Mary rolls her eyes. "Oh god, here we go."

James grins. "Sorry, boss; it's urgent." He holds his hand out, his other securing his backpack on his shoulder. He always slings the thing on just one shoulder. He thinks it makes him look cool. At least he said so, in first year. Now he's graduating and the habit's stuck. "Happy Teachers' Day, ladies," says James, and Lily only now notices the two long stems of flowers stuck between them. One rose, one sunflower.

"Teachers' Day," deadpans Mary, stepping forward. She's eyeing the sunflower.

"Yes, Mary, because we teach them to be upstanding citizens of this town," says Lily, gathering her bearings. The rose is _yellow_. Bright yellow, bloomed just so, the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

"Yes," says James, nodding solemnly. "Thank-you. We're nothing without you."

"That, and how to spell commemorate, which you forget all the time," adds Lily.

Mary snorts. James laughs out loud.

"Go on then, I don't have much time," says James, shaking the flowers slightly.

Lily takes them. She hands the sunflower to Mary. "Death Eaters on your tail?" she asks. It's this recently-fabricated inside thing between them, some made-up world of teleport and magic and ridiculous things called Death Eaters. If one lets it be, James Potter's strange, restless brain can be quite contagious.

"Two of them," he confirms, not one to disappoint.

Mary rolls her eyes again, but doesn't comment, accustomed to their weird exchanges. "You're the ones behind the locker roses then?" she inquires instead.

James just winks at her.

"Does this mean we don't have roses in our lockers?" asks Mary.

"Hmm, I wouldn't know for sure, because I don't know anything about any roses in any lockers," says James. "But from what I heard, everyone's supposed to have gotten one."

"What's this then?" asks Mary, of her sunflower and Lily's rose. "Spares?"

"Nah. Those are from the four of us. That, I can say for sure."

Mary smiles. "Thank-you. It's super sweet. You remembered my favourite flower!"

"How'd you know mine?" asks Lily, not remembering having mentioned it.

"Er, assuming much, Evans?" teases James. But his amused, knowing smile crinkles even his eyes, and Lily just _knows._ "We didn't know. Only the yellow ones were left in the shop," he explains. "They said someone bought all the others. Every single sodding bucket."

"Did they now?" says Lily, an eyebrow raised.

"I wonder who," quips Mary.

James shrugs. "Fret not though, Evans. Your preferences have been noted." He checks his watch. This seems to be a Marauder mannerism. "I gotta go, the lads are waiting for me. You don't happen to be going to Chuckskate's, do you?"

"We're going right now," says Mary.

"Brilliant," says James, but he starts jogging away to the opposite direction. "See you around," he calls over his shoulder.

And then he's off.

Lily and Mary look at each other.

"Thank-you!" Lily says, remembering just in time. She had to raise her voice a little, because James's jogged away a fair bit now.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" he calls back, waving, his grin ear-splitting.

* * *

Outside Chuckskate's, by the door, three large woven baskets sit at the foot of the specials board. One of them is empty, another has two yellow roses, and the third is spilling-full of them. On the board, a notice is taped, covering entirely the chalk-scribbled specials. Printed on it, in large, standard serif letters:

_We tried our best, but they wouldn't allow it inside, so here you go. Happy Valentine's Day, citizen of this town! Sorry these are all yellow. The shop's run out of other colors, can you believe it? Now take one! You're beautiful, and it's mandatory._ — _MWPP_

Below, way below on the bottom corner, there's another note. Mary and Lily have to stoop down to read it properly. This one's handwritten: _Take more than one if you're particularly fond of yellow roses. I'd say take eleven. Eleven sounds just about right._

It's not signed, but both Mary and Lily recognize the owner of the haphazard scrawl.

Mary smirks, straightens up, and pushes the door of Chuckskate's open. "That's how I'll know he's the one," she says, in sing-song, using her sunflower as a makeshift microphone. The familiar, homey warmth of Chuckskate's waft out to them, and Lily's not sure if it's hunger or something else that's making her stomach feel funny. "That's the _sign_..."

"Shut it, Macdonald," Lily tells her off, biting her lip to stop herself from smiling like an idiot. Mary laughs and disappears into the diner.

Making sure Mary's inside, Lily bends down to tear the bottom part of the note off. She pockets it, and then takes eleven roses from the third basket.


	6. Sighs and Smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Are you in love with me?)

**6/7.** Lily is not a sunset person. Mary is, Mary _strongly_ is; she thinks it's romantic. Lily, on the other hand, has associated sunsets with mill workers hobbling for home in the streets back in Cokeworth, their silhouettes not unlike the line of trees on the distant horizon; masses of black against factory smoke and blazing orange sky. Those workers were all small smiles and lopsided hats and shoulders slumped from exhaustion by the end of the day. The 'silhouettes against multi-colored skies' thing doesn't particularly appeal to Lily—too warm, she would say, too warm and grey. She means the _feeling_ too, not just the colours. And it's beautiful, sure, but it's a... _wet_ kind of beauty, if you will. At this point Mary would gape and ask, "What does that even mean?" to which Lily would only shrug, because she doesn't know what it means exactly herself, but she can't think of any other way to phrase it.

You can say she's a sunrise person. Lily. A sunrise, morning, breakfast, all things early person. The idea of it anyway, the aesthetic of it; not like she wakes up that early all the time. She sleeps in as much as she can too, given that her brain seems to work better under pressure, artificial light, and the hush of town after midnight. But when she's around for idle, alarm clock-less mornings, it makes her happy. She likes the sunlight sifting through the blinds, striped blankets dancing on her dawn-cold legs. She likes mountains outlined in thin strips of bright light, the kind that doesn't blind; like tamed, unblinking lightning. Dew on gossamer. Flowers that weren't around the day before. People stretching on their doorsteps, smiling/scowling/yawning at her over picket fences. It's green, and blue, and gold, and a muted version of Mary's dramatic sunset palette, perhaps, but Mary's sunsets... They sigh. And maybe that's romantic. Maybe it's a sigh of pining, of relief, of content—whatever. Lily's mornings _smile_. She prefers that.

She can pretend the sun is rising now, instead of the other way around. It's all purple and pink and everything Mary loves about sunsets beyond the passenger window of the Potters' pickup. It _is_ beautiful too, she supposes. Her head thuds on the glass. She closes her eyes. _It's a sigh_ , she thinks. _This moment feels like a sigh._

"All right, Evans?" asks her driver, and she smiles.

"Mhmm."

"Are you cold?"

"You're already hot," croaks Lily. No, really. She sounds like a frog.

"I mean, I already know that, and thank you, but that doesn't really answer the question."

He just never stops, doesn't he? "If you turn the heat up any more you'd have to take your shirt off."

"See, I can't tell if that's a threat or a request or what," says James. "You have to be more direct with stuff."

"I'm fine, Potter, shut it," says Lily. She'd have rolled her eyes, but she's done it a while ago and it felt like her skull would spin off her head. "Focus on the road, please."

Smirks at the road is what he does.

Lily's on her second eight-hour drive of the week, this one on the way back to town from Beauxbatons. The academy hosted this year's Interschool Performing Arts Convention, this thing held every two years and lasts four days tops, the two-way trip included. Ten Hogwarts students are customarily sent as delegates to the host school for this event, half or more than this number being seniors. When Lily was in second year she was one of the only two students in her year chosen to go, the other being Dorcas Meadowes. This year, Hogwarts chose the following to participate: Lily Evans, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Dorcas Meadowes, Benjy Fenwick, Alice Wells, and four others from outside the graduating class. They had to compete in contests of different fields, individual and group; attend seminars, participate in team and leadership building, trainings, symposiums—all that jazz. In last night's closing slash awarding ceremony, Hogwarts brought home seven medals and eight other recognition awards of some sort. They only placed second in the overall standing (next to Beauxbatons), but Flitwick, who went with them as coach, is pleased with them nonetheless. They know because he let them stay in the city for half the day to shop for souvenirs and tour and everything, and then he gathered them all at Four Marshes (this restaurant by the plaza; nothing on Chuckskate's, but decent enough) and paid for everyone's lunch. Two years ago, in the convention Lily and Dorcas were a part of, the delegates weren't granted the same favour. They set for the road straight after breakfast at the host school. But then again that batch only bagged fifth place, and it was Teresa Lockhart who went with them. Can you even imagine?

The younger delegates are required to travel in the official school transport with their coach (this year: a van, driven by Filch, accompanied by Flitwick), while the seniors are given the choice to ride with them, given there's still room, or be in their own private cars. This year's six participating seniors opted for the latter. The arrangement, on the way to Beauxbatons, was Alice and Lily in Fenwick's car; James and Remus in the Potters' pickup (James's parents apparently felt loath to lend their son the family car, as James dented it bad with Sirius not two weeks before the convention), and Dorcas ( _naturally_ ) went by herself. Of course, this was also going to be the set-up for the trip home, no question—except, well, Lily is sick. She wasn't all throughout. She only started feeling under the weather yesterday—a little head ache, muscle ache, but all fairly manageable—but when she found it difficult to swallow last night at the feast, she knew she was definitely coming down with something. Sore throats are Lily's warnings for impending doom. Sure enough, when she woke up in her quarters this morning, she was burning, she was freezing, and a certain amphibian has traded voices with hers.

Alice and Remus both have delicate health, so to say, and can't afford to travel with a horribly sick redhead for eight hours, especially with exams coming up. So Lily and Remus switched places. Fenwick was secretly relieved; Alice was immensely thankful; Remus was reluctant at first, but in the end reason won. Dorcas ( _naturally_ ) didn't have time for all of that, so she had neither idea about nor input whatsoever in the matter. James, slinging an arm around Lily, declared himself "immune", quite happily, and tucked her in the pickup's passenger seat with her jacket and _his_ jacket and whoever else's gloves and pillow and neck pillow these are.

And now the sun is rising.

Wait, no—setting. Sorry. The sun is setting. And James and Lily are both smiling quietly at the road, and she's still sick and she's not a sunset person but it's okay. She feels at ease.

"I have a question," she says.

"I have one, too," returns James.

With effort, she drags her head back up from the window to stare at him. But he can't really return that right now, driving and all. "No, seriously," says Lily. (Croaks, but never mind that.) "I have a question."

"I seriously do, too," he insists. "And I have to ask it first, because your answer to my question will determine if you get to ask yours."

"What—"

"I said I'm going first and here it is," he says, rushing the words out to beat her to it. "Are you sick-drunk?"

Lily blinks at him. "Am I what?"

James laughs. "Okay, you are. Never mind. This question of yours—it's going to make me uncomfortable, isn't it? You always do that when you're drunk, and I figured this counts."

Lily doesn't think it's fair that he's asked two questions in a row now, so she ignores his babbling and says, "Are you in love with me?"

The pickup surges and sort of swerves to the left. He brakes a little too hard, releases a little too fast, swears under his breath—and then finally gets his wits back.

"Oi," says Lily.

"Sorry," says James, and now he sounds like a frog himself. "What—what sort of barmy question was that, Evans?" he sputters. What Lily can see of his face is flushed red.

"Alright, that's a no then," she says.

"No, I—I don't _know_ ," he rectifies. "How am I supposed to know? That was like—that was a gazillion bottles of Ogden's drunk level question, how was I— _what's wrong with you?_ "

Lily chuckles at his fluster. And then, when they've both calmed down—she from her amusement and he from... his nerves, perhaps—she says, "I just thought... I mean, what _are_ we, James?" He doesn't answer. Even his neck is crimson. "You—you're sweet sometimes, but you're sweet to Mary too, and we're alone only ever to do stupid sets or rehearse or do homework, and you never... I don't know, we're not _anything_ , but you make me feel like we _should_ be something else, and I'm confused. And the question was probably extreme, but Mary told me, you know, she told me, 'either he doesn't actually like you and you're being delusional _or_ he's bloody in love with you and he's scared to jump in' and all that, which, okay, is all very movie-ish to even be real, but... You're getting this, right? What I'm saying?"

He still doesn't say anything, and Lily's worried that he doesn't, in fact, get what she's saying, but then, quietly, he answers, "Yeah."

"Okay," she says, when he doesn't add any more. "Good. So—what are we then?"

He takes another moment. "I really fancy you. Like—a lot."

"And I do you."

He bites his lip. "Ahuh. Should I pull over?"

"James, I need you to shut up and act your age right now, you hear?"

"I hear," he says, nodding vigorously, struggling to keep his expression straight. "And I know you do."

"I _know_ you know I do," groans Lily. "That's what frustrates me. I know, you know, I know you know and you know I know and _yet_..."

"I'm sorry," he mutters. He doesn't look like he's going to laugh anymore.

"What do we do about it? Why haven't we done anything about it?"

"That would be me," he admits. Lily can tell, by the way he's suddenly especially focused on the empty road, that should his hands and eyes have been free he'd still have averted his gaze. Before she can remark on this, he speaks again: "Remember that day we... That rainy day at the town plaza?"

'Course she does. "I remember swearing not to have anything to do with you ever, yes."

He flinches. "Yeah, I never really told you why, did I? I just tried to make it up to you best I could, and you knew Jeanne and I broke up that day, but that—I know that doesn't excuse it. I was absolute shite to you, Lily. I'm surprised, honestly, that you forgave me still, and that you... you didn't dismiss me for good. Sirius said you told him you fancied me, and I didn't believe him at first—"

"He _told_ you?" snaps Lily, distracted despite herself.

James frowns. "I thought you knew I knew."

"I did, but that's because the last few weeks have been the most blatant with anyone about anything I have ever been in my entire life!"

"Oh. That was just... confirmation? I knew because Sirius told me."

"Oh my god. I'm going to dangle him by the feet with barbed wire and feed him to rats."

James lets out a hearty chuckle. "Come on. You didn't really think he wouldn't tell me?"

"I did, actually," she sulks.

James spares her a glance, barely a second, and balks at her expression. "That's not going to be a problem, is it? That he told me?"

"Depends on whether you count the wire and rats thing as a problem."

"That's all? You're not going to... er, unfancy me? Because of it?"

"Would if I could," she teases. And then she sees his face falling, and she says, "No, James; that's bonkers. And do continue with your interrupted appeal for my forgiveness, if you please. We seem to have gone off on a tangent, and we need to... get back on that tangent."

James snorts.

"That's not doing anything good for you, mister."

"Alright, sorry," he says. "So Sirius told me you like me—"

"You like saying that a lot, don't you," comments Lily, noticing the way his lips twitched at ' _you like me_ '.

"As a matter of fact, I do," says James. He has to fight to keep a grin in, and when it breaks, he lets out this little growl of frustration. "Come on, Evans, let me talk. We're serious here. This is so long due."

"And that's my fault?"

"No, but you're sick-drunk, which makes you more willing to listen and likely to forgive, and I'm driving, which... prevents me from running. There's no better time."

_Running?_ "Okay. Go. You're all clear."

He takes a deep breath. "So he told me... anyway, yeah, he told me that. I didn't know, Lily. Honest to god. How could I have... We didn't kiss when we had the chance, so I thought you weren't interested—"

"You had a girlfriend, you peanut. Of course I couldn't—"

"Yeah, I know, I know, I'm getting there... Actually, no, I don't know where I'm getting at." He licks his lips, a crease forming in his brows. The expressway is empty for as far as Lily can see, but James slows down, staring ahead in thought. "Jeanne said... She said a lot of things that day. That I was unfair to have started anything with her, that I never really tried with us, never really cared—and I got angry, because I did. You believe me, don't you? I really did. I might not have been... I mean, I truly liked her. She's pretty, she's smart, she's fun to be around with, I actually liked it when we—"

"Point quite taken, Potter."

He smiles sheepishly. "Sorry. Anyway, it wasn't my intention to hurt her or just—ditch her after some time, I swear. I tried to make it work, and we were genuinely happy for a while. I thought we were. But she accused me of having used her as some temporary thing while you had Wanker McCheekbones—" He means Lily's ex, Terrence Hunter, whom he never calls by his proper name, "—and then when the coast was clear, she said I promptly started trying to secretly win you over, and I thought—I _said_ —bullshit _._ That was just unfair."

Lily doesn't know what to say to this, or how it relates to her original question. It seems important to him, however, so she feels like pointing this out might be mean.

"I was angry _about_ you," he breathes out. "That day. Not _at_ you. I was mad that—Jeanne and I were together for almost a year, and I like to think I did try with her, Evans. I told her that, but then she started throwing last summer at me, and then that kiss at the updates, and after her shouting at me about it over and over I started thinking, god, did I really try? I just—Do you know how pathetically easily I crack when I'm around you?"

_Now_ Lily thinks she knows where he's going with it.

"So, yeah. This..." He lets out a weak laugh. "This might not be making sense at all. I've been trying to get away with having to explain to you for so long that I've forgotten what I'm supposed to really say to you about it, but the thing is—I botched up me and Jeanne, I felt like I'd just been lying to everyone, even to my own fucking self, and that the whole year was a fucking waste of time and I hurt this person for _nothing_. I feel rotten about it."

"You're saying we can't be together now," she says. A summation, not a question.

It's almost like he's physically hurt over what she said. "I'm saying not _yet,_ if that's okay. I have to... I don't know. Fix this first? I've apologized to Jeanne, and she's slowly warming up to me again, but I... I'm having trouble..." He trails off.

"Forgiving yourself?"

"No."

"What then?"

He chews on his lower lip. "Well, fine, yeah. That, I guess... but I don't want to sound all self-important." He turns to her for a heartbeat to smile. "So I'm gonna say—I'm trying to understand what the hell my bloody damage is. Because I screwed up, Evans. Big time."

"James, you didn't hurt her on purpose."

"Didn't I?"

"No," says Lily firmly.

"I hurt _you_ on purpose," he puts out. "And it wasn't even your fault." He pauses. "Hey, you don't think that, do you? Because it's not your fault. None of it."

"No, I never thought it. That's why I was mad, because it felt like it was."

"It wasn't," he assures her. "I'm sorry."

"Hmm."

He steals a glance again. "Still not going to unfancy me?" When she doesn't immediately answer, he says, "You can, of course. I'm not going to ask you to wait and all."

"Unfancy is not even a word," says Lily simply.

"Er... dump me then?"

"We're not together, like you said."

He's quiet.

"But it already feels like we are," says Lily. "And that's what matters, isn't it? Who cares about labels?"

"Oi, I do," he protests. "I want... I've fancied you for so long. I thought it stopped, and I did learn to ignore it over time, but it never really went away. You're rather hard to... er, _tune out_ , sometimes, did you know?"

"Yep. It's the hair."

He laughs. And then, more pensively, "I want to make it right with Jeanne and me first so no one gets to accuse you of... things. I want us to be right, okay? I want it to work. I don't want to leave all my fuck-ups a mess and have them catch up to us later on."

"I understand." And she does. She really does.

"Are you mad?"

"No," she says truthfully. "I'm... proud of you. As a friend. Surprisingly."

"What?" he says, chuckling, incredulous.

"Well, when Sirius told me you were moping not because you broke up but because of _me_ , I thought—objectively—wow, now there's an awful boyfriend if I ever saw one. I felt bad for Jeanne. I was worried I'd chosen to fancy someone problematic."

"Evans, sorry to break this to you, but I am veritably _plenty_ problematic."

"I suppose," she says, a half-smile forming on her lips. "I don't know. This sucks for me as someone who wants to be with you—and I do. I actually want to be with you like that, can you believe it?"

"Yep, it's the hair," he echoes her, and Lily reaches out to weakly punch his arm.

"But I'm also really glad to know that you're not altogether some insensitive prick."

"Thanks," he says. "Sirius thinks I'm overthinking it."

"You are a bit." A thought occurs to her. "What if Jeanne never forgives you?"

"She _will_ ," he says determinedly. "And if she doesn't... well, I guess I'd... let you kiss me senseless and forget all about it."

"Why can't we do that now?"

He smirks. "You're sick, for one," he supplies.

"I have a feeling you don't care about that," guesses Lily. "'Sides, I thought you said you were immune."

"Evans, in the wise words of Gandalf the Grey—"

"White."

" _Mithrandir_ —" He clears his throat, "—'Don't. _Tempt_ me. Frodo.'"

She shouldn't be laughing so much because it makes her head throb—and wasn't this a serious matter to begin with?—but she does, and she thinks this is one of the reasons why she likes him, and then she goes from that to: this is is one of the reasons why she's falling in love with him. Well, _m_ _ight_ be. Falling bloody in love with him.

_Watch it now, Evans._

"I owe Jeanne this," says James, and although the mirth hasn't quite died down on his lips yet, the apology is apparent in his eyes. "And I owe you a clean slate, too."

She thinks about all of it. And then, "Okay," she says, resolutely. "You've laid down your appeal well."

James settles better in his seat, a content smile plastered on his face.

The sun has long set.

_It still feels like a sigh, this._

Lily can't see much of the sky from her place, but it's a starry evening from what little she's indulged with. Their conversation has traded places with the steady hum of the pickup, and Lily now finds it a struggle to not succumb to the inviting lull.

_A sigh of content. Of pining. Whatever._

James notices her head drooping. He starts humming the Lord of the Rings theme.

"That's just gonna do the opposite," she chastises him, but it comes out a mumble, and its accompanying laugh comes out an amused, shuddering exhale.

_But it also feels like a smile._

"Shut up and go kiss me senseless in your dreams," he advises, his fond smile blurred and flickering beneath Lily's uncooperative lids. He starts singing again.

_This moment is a big, foolish, puppy-James grin..._

Lily closes her eyes and does as she's told.


	7. The King and Queen of Schmaltz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (I thought you were supposed to be the cool, unfuckwithable jock type, you know? Not... I don't know. Mr. Darcy.)

**7/7.** "What do you mean you can't play the B chord?" asks James, cross-legged on the piano room floor with his guitar, and so affected is he by this information that he can't help but move in exasperation while announcing it. Lily, on a leather-padded seat behind him, her hands busy with his hair, tugs on the strands to remind him (for the umpteenth time) to keep still.

"I can't play it," she repeats. Their voices echo around the room, what with nothing but them and the dim lighting and the cloth-covered ancient pianos. "I can't press down hard enough or make my fingers reach the right fret in time. I fumble. Ruins my timing."

"But you—Okay, last week, at Slughorn's party, you played that song—"

"Oh, I transposed it up to a key with chords I _can_ play, and then I used my capo to match my pitch," she explains. "But I always do that. How can you not have noticed that ever?"

"I don't look at people's hands when they play, Evans. I look at their faces. I _listen_. I'm a right decent audience."

"When Remus plays you literally interrupt him every thirty seconds to correct his fingers."

"That's different."

"You mean you are so besotted with me."

"I _mean_ I am so besotted with someone who can't play B _and_ who uses words like 'besotted' in casual conversation," he retorts, shaking his head yet again, to Lily's inconvenience.

"Heel, Prongs," she orders, pulling at a few tufts of his stubborn hair and using his pet name to accentuate her command. He cranes his neck to glare up at her, and she laughs. "Sorry." She massages his scalp as compensation. "Couldn't resist."

"You got it wrong anyway," says James, turning back away as he should. He tries to keep still this time at least. He starts idly strumming his guitar to distract himself. "Sirius is the dog."

"Why _is_ he the dog?" asks Lily, resuming on her grueling task—getting the hundred or so elastic hair ties out of the hundred or so flip-under accents currently adorning James's hair. Apparently he fell asleep backstage during the play, Alice left a prop box full of rubber elastics near the audio mixer, and James's mates are, in his own exact words, 'bored fucking shitheads'.

It's evening, and the seniors just wrapped up their very last show. She and James have come all the way to the piano room because they reckoned no one would come bother them here, it being a good distance from Merlin Hall, where most of the people still are. It's a Saturday, so besides the seniors, some prominent guests invited to the show, and a few representatives from the underclassmen, the school is more or less empty. Lily is still in her Andromache clothes. James's head looks like some new evolution of sea urchin.

Same head's just gone unnaturally still, and he's not answering her question, she notices, so she follows up with, "What's the deal with 'Padfoot'?"

"Oh, you know," he answers. "He's... the _dog_ star. The best friend. He's loyal. He can sniff food from miles away, barks at strangers, needs a leash every now and then. Things like that."

Lily rolls her eyes. "It's because of that something that happened two years ago that you lot still won't talk about, isn't it?"

She can't see his face, but when he speaks, she can _hear_ the sheepish smile off the words. "Yes. And please don't ask me about it, because I still can't say, and the temptation will be torture."

She huffs. "I'll figure it out for myself soon enough," she says. "Why are you the shrimp, though? I can know that bit, right?"

His guitar goes quiet. "What?"

"Why are you the shrimp?"

"I am _not_ ," he faces her again, and this time Lily lets him. She won't miss his face for this. "The _shrimp_. What are you talking about?"

Of course she knows he's not the bloody shrimp. It's just so funny when he's like this. "Prawns?"

He explodes at that, basically. "Oh my god, how many times—I'm a _stag_ , Evans. Prongs. Stag. Antlers. Not—" He catches her expression and narrows his eyes at her. "You like riling me up, don't you?"

"Sure, Shrimp."

"Well, if you wanna play this game, _Ginger_."

"Please. That's not even right. My hair isn't..." She stops at the pointed look on his face. "Alright. Point taken."

He settles back in position, appeased, and Lily resumes picking at the hair ties.

"So why are you the stag?" she asks.

"'Cause I'm majestic."

She snorts. And then, "You know, I heard from somewhere that stags get... _excited_ , when they rub their antlers against grass or something."

It doesn't seem like the first time he's heard this, for he only sighs and says, "First of all, that's so dumb and untrue."

"You looked it up?"

"No."

Lily gives him a moment.

"Fine, yes, but only so I can disprove idiots and save misinformed people such as yourself."

She chuckles. "Of course. And second of all?"

"Second of all, if I _did_ have antlers, in light of that fun fact, they'd be... Y'know what, forget it. There's no second of all."

"Oho, but you really don't want me finishing that sentence on my own," says Lily, tackling a particularly entangled elastic, both of them wincing—she from the effort and he from the pain. They've been at it for a while though, so no one really feels like remarking on it anymore. Lily carries on with, "If you had antlers, in light of that fun fact... I can only really think of unappealing things after that, none of them good for you."

"I don't think me finishing that sentence would be good for me either. Or you."

"Oh, go on. I can handle it. Plus you've gotten me all curious now."

"I won't be held responsible for this."

"Just finish the goddamn sentence, James."

"Right. Okay. So—If I did have antlers, in light of that _super_ fun fact, you're kind of massaging the place where they ought to be, and it does kind of—"

Lily's hands freeze over his head and promptly drop down to his shoulders. "Okay, oh my god, you're right. Do _not_ finish that sentence."

James chuckles, preposterously smug about this reaction. He reaches up with one hand—his other steadying his guitar—to lead hers back up to the top of his head. "Told you."

She resumes her war with the elastics. "Look, I'm already having trouble ignoring the fact that we're alone in the soddin' piano room, alright—"

"I know."

"So just— _shut up_."

Somehow, she knew exactly what he was going to say next, but she still makes a face when it comes: "Or else what?" he drawls, his head deliberately thudding against her knee.

"You bloody well know," she tells him, tilting his head up by the jaw (that fucking jaw) so she can austerely look him straight in the eye. "Or else we break the pact. And we've been doing so well with it."

"If we do break the pact, no one would know we broke the pact."

"Potter, you made that goddamn pact. I've already started sticking with it, and I'm a woman of my word." He opens his mouth to respond, but Lily beats him to it, loudly, with, "You used your Marauder's honor thing on it."

He scrunches his nose and purses his lips in frustration at that, and he looks so stupidly cute that Lily's pact-resolve wavers supremely. "Damnit," he voices her thought out loud. And then, with a groan, "I know it made perfect sense then, but why did I have to be such an overthinking tosser?"

"An overthinking, brooding, overly introspective, perhaps even slightly pretentious—"

" _Thank you_ , Lily."

"Hey, it's only till next week now," she reminds him. "That was the deal. On graduation, forgiven or not, I jump your bones."

"And I jump yours."

For two self-proclaimed relatively sensible people, that really wasn't the wisest diction, given their situation and everything. They're quiet, breaths stopped and gazes held. The distance—the lack of it—crackles.

Lily breaks first, more exhaling the words out than uttering them, "Let's not..."

"Yeah, better not," he agrees at once, just as breathlessly, looking away and shaking his head clear.

The next ten minutes is spent in silence (not awkward, never awkward, but not quite as comfortable either), more wincing, and, on Lily's part, extra concentration on getting James's hair to look more its usual stormhead than evolved sea urchin. The last is mostly just to get her mind off the present... ah, _frustration_. On the eleventh minute, someone blasts the door open. They don't, not really, but they might as well have by the deafening racket and the heart attack they just gave her.

" _GUESS WHAT_ ," Sirius yells from the doorway, short-winded and clearly on cloud nine.

Before either Lily or James can speak—to scold him, not to _guess what_ —someone rams into Sirius and bursts into the room. Sirius stumbles, but the new arrival—Remus—ignores him and his offended 'Oi!', and proceeds to announce, " _We got in._ "

"Thanks so much for stealing my moment," repines Sirius.

"What—Wait, _what?_ " James is on his feet now, admonishments forgotten. He even left his guitar on the floor.

Peter arrives just then, with much less ruckus, pausing for a moment in the hall to catch his breath before entering the piano room. "McGonagall just gave us the letter," he informs James, still panting.

"Puddlemere United," says Sirius, slinging an arm around James and shoving the aforementioned letter in his hands.

"We're signing a contract with Puddlemere United," mutters Remus, looking off into space as he mechanically makes his way to Lily. Lily scoots to the side so they can share the cramped leather seat. She grins at him when he slumps down. Still rather dreamily, he too puts an arm around her and grins right back.

"Ah, my boys," says Lily fondly, looking round at them. "I'm so proud of you."

"I can't believe this," says James, his eyes on the letter.

"I do," says Sirius. He notices Peter standing to the side, and pulls him in for a one-armed hug as well. Peter doesn't say anything, but his grin picks up noticeably. "We're brilliant," Sirius continues.

"So are we going?" asks Peter.

James looks thoroughly incredulous. "What do you mean are we going? Of course we're going, Wormy—"

"No, no, he means the party," explains Remus. "Fenwick's throwing one at The Cove tonight. Last show and finals done and all. Everyone's going straight there after pack-up."

"Yes, we're going," says Sirius. "We're going to get drunk. We're going to get lucky. And then, lads, we're going to be fucking superstars."

"You already sound drunk," says Lily.

"You're coming, right?" James asks Lily, patting Sirius's hand before extricating himself from him to retrieve his guitar off the floor.

"Yeah, Benjy's already told me and Mary earlier about it. Let me just get changed. I'll meet you outside..." She and Remus get up, and they all make their way out. Remus remembers to switch the lights off.

Out in the hall, Lily asks James, "You're going with half your hair still like that though?"

Sirius answers for him. "Oh, who cares? We're signing a contract with Puddlemere United next week!"

To answer Lily, James just nods and points at Sirius in a 'what this idiot said' kind of way.

"He's going to be using that to justify everything until next week, I'm telling you," Peter says, about Sirius.

"Oh, totally," agrees Remus. "'Sirius, you haven't showered in two days.'—'Oh, who cares? We're gonna be superstars.'—'Sirius, that sandwich's been under the cushions since God knows when.'—'Fucking _superstars_ , Moony! _Puddlemere United!_ '"

"Ha ha," deadpans Sirius, they're all in stitches laughing, and James holds Lily's hand until they separate at the end of the hall.

* * *

Lily's just given up trying to properly pack her clothes and accessories into her backpack and has just resorted to shoving them inside in an embarrassing, disorderly lump, when someone knocks on the already open dressing room door. Thinking it's one of the boys come to hasten her, she doesn't look up. "I'm there, I'm there—"

"You're where?" asks Jeanne, for that's who it is, as it happens.

"Oh." Lily abandons her current headache and steels herself for this oncoming one... Right, she doesn't know if it's going to be a headache, but she prepares herself nonetheless, just in case. "Hi."

"Hi," Jeanne returns, coming in and settling on the nearest chair. Not going to be a quick chat then. Alright.

"Er, you need anything?" Lily asks, when Jeanne doesn't follow her greeting up.

"I'm not sure," says Jeanne, staring at Lily curiously. "I'm here to... thank you, I guess."

_What?_ "Er—for?"

"For not... For waiting for me to be okay with you and James. That's really... Yeah."

Lily doesn't mind that ambiguous 'yeah'; she can't think of any adjective that would cap the sentence quite right either. The fact that Jeanne's here though, telling her this... The hope and excitement start to bubble up, and Lily tries her best to stomp on it at once. "You're welcome," she says simply. Denial would be unnecessary, immature. Outright asking if she's now okay with her and James, on the other hand, as is seemingly implied here... now _that's_ necessary, although she can't bring herself to do it.

Jeanne doesn't speak for a moment. Lily doesn't want to ask, she doesn't know what to say, and she doesn't think Jeanne would appreciate silly small talk, so she waits.

When Jeanne finally says something, it's definitely not whatever the hell Lily was expecting: "I had sex with your ex-boyfriend numerous times this week."

Lily gapes at her. Jeanne didn't sound bashful, or hesitant—she sounded... like what she said was _not_ what she just said. Lily opens her mouth twice, thrice, but nothing comes out till the fourth try. What's more, when she gets her faculties working, she chooses the most irrelevant thing to answer with: "Which one?"

Jeanne's eyebrows shoot up. "I didn't realize there's more than one."

"There is." _Shut up. Shut. Up. Who cares if there's more than one? Do you? Do you even care whom she bloody slept with? No, you don't. So shut the hell up._

"Oh, okay," says Jeanne.

Lily asks, "Terrence?"

But Jeanne was already saying, "I meant Hunter," so they spoke at the same time.

Lily nods slowly. She takes a second to process this, see if it bothers her in the slightest.

It doesn't. Like, at all.

"I like him," elaborates Jeanne. "He likes me too, he said. We're sort of going out now. 'Course, he might just be getting back at James, but he promised he wasn't, and I'm willing to take the risk. He's really good in bed." Lily makes a face. Does she have to say that last bit? Jeanne seems unperturbed though, she said all that with no pause whatsoever, evidently not meaning any harm. Lily quickly tries to smooth her expression out. However: "I was surprised. He does things I've never really—"

"Jeanne," Lily interrupts, mildly horrified at how specific and forthright she's being. "I really don't—"

"Oh. Of course. Sorry, yes, of course you already know this..."

A dozen or so question marks light up in Lily's brain. She debates telling her that _that's_ not quite the point, but figures this would just get them further from the more important things. "I... Are you... Why are you telling me this?"

"I wasn't sure if I ought to apologize."

"No!" says Lily immediately, bewildered. "No, of course you don't have to. I have no problem with it. We're long broken up. I'm cool."

Jeanne's not smiling, but she seems relieved anyhow. "Me, too. I'm cool," she says, but it sounds... too _tentative_ , like she's still testing the words out, like Lily shouldn't be around for it yet.

Lily's breath is slowing the fuck down. "With?" she asks, knowing full well she's being kind of dumb about it. She just—She wants to be absolutely, one hundred per cent clear about this, okay?

"With you and James," says Jeanne, finally, and Lily can't help it—she does a little victory dance in her head. "You're pretty much essentially together anyway, but..."

"Oh, no, we haven't—We're just really close, but I hang out with his mates a lot, too. We don't—"

"I know that, Lily," Jeanne cuts her off, although not impatiently. Lily thinks she might have so wrongly prejudged this girl. "You always have effortlessly fit with him and his friends. Besides, I _would_ know if you two've done things." Jeanne tilts her head to the side and scrutinizes Lily's face out of the blue, and then, decidedly satisfied, she smiles. "It's not on your face yet."

Sure, she does and says weird things like that sometimes, but Lily is liking Jeanne more and more by the minute. "I'm happy," says Lily. "Really happy. About you and Terrence."

"And about you and James," Jeanne supplies as-a-matter-of-factly.

"Yes," says Lily. "I'm really very happy about that, too. I'm so happy I could hug you."

Of all the things she could have been uncomfortable with, Jeanne chooses that one. "Oh, I don't think that's—"

Lily walks over to her anyway, hugging the rest of her sentence away. "You're way cooler than I thought," she admits.

"And you're less cooler than I thought," Jeanne jokes, awkwardly patting Lily's back. At least Lily thinks she was joking, because she laughed while she said it.

Eh, she doesn't care. She's decided she likes Jeanne Marchbanks, and that she's definitely _not_ a headache.

Also—she does that mental victory dance again—she can jump a certain someone's bones now. How can she bring herself to care about other things, really?

* * *

The Cove is... well, a _cove_ , in its most literal sense, privately owned by the Fenwicks, who have turned it into a lavish beach resort. It's usually swarmed with tourists and the pompous, wealthier side of the town, but Benjy had it closed for the weekend, so except for a few foreigners who prebooked (but even they have the sense to draw back after seeing the seniors' party in full swing), the huts lining the shore are all filled with the ecstatic members of this year's Hogwarts graduating class. There are a hundred mason jar candles dotting the sand, the waves laze in and out of the coast, and the finest Ogden's bottles are endlessly passed around. They can be as smashed and loud and amply, deservingly triumphant here, and they all know and show it.

Benjy has thoughtfully reserved an entire building for the batch, too, so that no one is to leave the premises until everyone's fully sober the next day, having anticipated the possibility that most of them would be driving their respective vehicles to the venue.

God bless Benjy Fenwick, honestly. This is why he's their default host. He's just the best.

Having had their share of the raucous party in the first few hours, James and Lily eventually retreat to the northern, dimmer, more rocky part of the cove, taking their jackets, a picnic blanket, a few bottles of Ogden's, and a mason jar candle with them.

Hiding behind an outcrop twice their height then, toasting to graduation and the final project being a success and Lily being cast in a local TV show and Mary getting accepted to her dream grad school and the boys signing with Puddlemere United—Lily thinks, _this is it._ This is the perfect time to tell him about Jeanne, and for all the good things that that entails.

She couldn't really tell him earlier—everyone was still pretty excited about Puddlemere United when she met them outside the school. Then, although Sirius, Remus, and Peter stayed on the back of the pickup on the way to The Cove, the drive was too short to start such an important discussion. And then it was just too crowded, too loud, and people kept stealing them from each other to chat or say congratulations or trade future plans or wish good luck...

_Now_ , though.

God but she doesn't even know where to start.

Maybe she could just kiss him.

She turns her head to look at him now, lying beside her on their blanket, the sand soft and cold beneath. There are still a few elastics left in his hair, but they're hardly noticeable in this light now. He's looking for Sirius in the sky—the constellation, that is, if that needs saying—but by the crease between his eyebrows and his lower lip jutted out, he still hasn't found it. He has his arms behind his head, much like that night in the gardens, on Foundation Day.

Yeah. She could just kiss him. She wants to so much.

She looks back up at the skies. She doesn't know where Sirius is either.

"Guess what," she begins, and she wants to yell it like Sirius did a while ago—she reckons his earlier level of excitement parallels hers now—but she also reminds herself that, no, she's not _that_ crazy.

"Hm?"

"Jeanne slept with Terrence."

If he'd been drinking, he'd have sputtered. Three full seconds, and then, "Who did what with whom?"

"Jeanne had sex with Terrence," she spells out for him.

" _What._ "

She wants to laugh at his expression, but _this is it,_ and the anticipation of the next crucial minutes is unbearable. "She told me."

"When?"

"When did they do it or when did she tell me?"

"Tell you."

"Earlier. In the dressing room, while I was packing."

He sits up. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," says Lily. James is watching her intensely now, but she keeps her eyes on the sky. "She also said he was heaps better than you."

He raises an eyebrow, his floored daze disrupted. " _Seriously_."

She gives in and laughs. "Well, no, but she seemed downright impressed." She pauses. _This is it._ "She also said—"

"Wait, I'm not ready," he blurts out, fidgeting and sitting straighter. "Will you—will you sit up for a sec? I think I can guess what she said, and it's—it's kind of getting really hard to think with you lying there looking up at me—"

"I'm looking at the _stars_ , you presumptuous peanut."

"Just—come up—" He pulls her up by the arm, so she does. "Right. What did she say?"

"She said she was cool with us," says Lily, beaming at him.

"Explicitly?"

"Those were her exact words."

"Sure?"

"Well, those were _my_ exact words—"

His eyes widen beneath his specs. "Evans, it doesn't work that way—"

"No! I said I was cool with her and Terrence, and then she was like, 'I'm cool with you and James, too'." When the doubt on his face still won't leg it, she says, "Exactly that. I swear."

Without dragging his gaze off her, he takes her hand excitedly and laces their fingers together. He bites his lip in an attempt to tone the wide grinning down, but she's fine with that, really, not being able to restrain her giddiness herself.

"Evans."

"Yeah."

"Do you—"

" _Yes_."

"Well, _hell_ , woman. Control yourself, will you?"

Lily laughs. This much bliss is _intoxicating_. "What's the point? I already know what you're going to ask."

"How could you know?"

"I'm a mind reader. Dear god, it's like you don't know me at all."

"No, I know that," he says, "which is why I'm concerned. See, I was gonna say, do you wanna maybe tie your hair up? It's whipping in my face and it hurts."

She slaps him on the arm.

"Are you sick?" he continues, touching her forehead with the back of his hand, and then moving down to her neck. "Evans, your powers aren't working!"

She rolls her eyes. "How am I attracted to you again?"

"You started it," he quips. He puts an arm around her and draws her close. "And fine, don't let the bloke have his moment. It's not like he practiced it or anything."

"You practiced?"

He pouts and doesn't answer.

"Alright. Ask me. I won't interrupt it."

He lights up. He tilts down his head to meet her gaze. "Do you want to be mine?"

She bites her bottom lip to keep the immediate bubble of laughter in, but she doesn't succeed, and the giggles come forth anyway. "Okay, for real now."

He frowns. "That was for real."

Lily leans away just enough to regard him. " _That's_ how you practiced it?"

"Yes! What's wrong with it?"

"It's... I can't answer that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's so... The boys weren't around when you rehearsed this, were they?"

"Are you kidding me? They'd have laughed themselves to death."

"Can't imagine why."

"Oi," he scolds her, squeezing her shoulder. "I'm being my sincere, vulnerable self here."

She nods and tries to straighten her expression. She still finds it funny, though. "Sorry. Okay. Go on."

"That was all. It's your turn."

"No. Ask me again."

He smiles to himself, pleased. "Okay—do you wanna be mine?"

She laughs again. Goddamnit.

"Sincere and vulnerable, Evans. Sincere and vulnerable and now also offended."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just—I thought you were supposed to be the cool, unfuckwithable jock type, you know? Not... I don't know. _Mr. Darcy._ "

"You _like_ Mr. Darcy," he points out.

"I do," she agrees. "Okay. I'll behave. Just. One more. _Last_. I'm behaving."

He takes a deep breath. "Lily Evans, do you—"

Lily rubs her lips together to keep in the laugh—she just can't help it, alright, it's so ridiculously _hokey_ , it's too cute, she's too happy, she can't _take it_ —but then he kisses her, just grabs her face and goes straight into it, lips-crushing-tongue-swirling-and-large-hands-delicately-cupping-her-jaws straight into it. His fingertips graze her ears and it tickles a little, but she can feel that tingle everywhere else— _everywhere else_ —and he's _moving_ , all of him, like his whole body wants to kiss her the way his mouth is doing, and oh my god that doesn't even make sense, she's not making sense, and it's still going, fuck, he's going to ravish her that's what's going to happen—

He stops, hands still on her face. She's breathless, she's flushed, and he—he has one eyebrow raised at her and his lips are pursed and he doesn't say it anymore but she can hear it, she can hear the question in the ringing silence, loud and clear and no longer funny. Just. Really tingly.

_Stars._

God, this boy is exploding stars and yellow roses and smiling sunrises and everything Lily loves with all her heart.

"Yours," she confirms, nodding vigorously, "Definitely yours. Forever and ever. To infinity and beyond."

He smirks. "Who's schmaltzy now?"

"Kiss me like that again and we'll be king and queen of schmaltz."

But he doesn't need telling, because he's already leaned in. When he speaks his lips brush over hers, and she sighs and her eyes close on their own because it just feels. So. Goddamn. _Good_. "Consider this your coronation then."

And boy does he really make it feel like it is.


End file.
